In the bleak Norwegian midwinter of 1943, a group of resistance fighters
manages to destroy machinery used by the Germans to make "heavy water",
a key ingredient in building atomic bombs. The exercise, labeled
Operation Grouse, was one of the most audacious raids of World War II,
carried out by four handpicked commandos parachuted into German-occupied
Norway. It was the plot of a Hollywood movie called The Heroes of
Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris, but in fact, British
television presenter and survival expert Ray Mears claims the film was a
pale imitation of the true story. Mears and a team of serving Royal
Marines and Norwegian troops follow the grueling campaign the men
underwent 60 year later. He demonstrates their courage as they struggled
with freezing conditions and minimal rations, to survive four months on
the brutal Hardanger Plateau, site of the Nors...

Type: Documentary

Languages: English

Status: Ended

Runtime: 50 minutes

Premier: 2003-09-21

The Real Heroes of Telemark - Knut Haugland - Netflix

Knut Magne Haugland, DSO, MM, (23 September 1917 – 25 December 2009) was
a resistance fighter and noted explorer from Norway, who accompanied
Thor Heyerdahl on his famous 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition.

The Real Heroes of Telemark - Heavy water sabotage - Netflix

Haugland, with nine other Norwegian resisters organised and carried out
the famous raid on the Norsk Hydro Rjukan plant at Vemork. The plant was
known to be producing heavy water, and although the scientist and
organiser of the sabotage, Leif Tronstad, had not been aware of the
connection between heavy water and atomic weaponry early in the war, it
eventually became clear that Germany could be using the heavy water for
a nuclear energy project. Haugland was parachuted over Hardangervidda on
18 October 1942 together with Arne Kjelstrup, Jens-Anton Poulsson and
Claus Helberg. Their codename was Operation Grouse, and their first
mission was to await the British Operation Freshman. Freshman became a
disastrous failure, but Grouse was ordered to wait for another team:
Operation Gunnerside. The plant at Vemork was successfully sabotaged in
February 1943. This was dramatised in the 1963 Anthony Mann-directed
film The Heroes of Telemark, which he did not approve of. In 2003 he
made a BBC documentary with Ray Mears, The Real Heroes of Telemark.